Structures enabling people to climb various types of poles for different reasons have been known for some time. For example, various arrangements for climbing poles may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,968,858; 4,527,660; and 5,050,704. These various patents all relate to ways of climbing poles of different types to perform work, each using some sort of safety line for maintaining the person on the pole. All of these prior art type arrangements, however, fail to allow the worker to work around the pole unless he were to dismount the pole and start over again at a different spot.
Further in this vein, an even more difficult arrangement to work around the pole may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,957,135. This more complicated device involves a cage mounted to the pole for carrying a worker up the pole. Again, while a safety line is present, the worker cannot move the cage about the pole as he works or climbs.
Finally, in the patent to Kleveborn, U.S. Pat. No. 4,572,329 a structure is provided for climbing a rail-type pole having a U-shaped runner to which a line is attached. The difficulty with this type of prior art arrangement is the use of stepping shoe plates mounted on runners fitted to the rail to move upwardly, as the worker moves his feet. Also, this prior art type arrangement uses a rail-like member on which the climbing structure is mounted, rather than having a cylindrical-like pole structure like that used throughout the world.